


Sacco di Roma

by carmenta



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Rice
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-02-01
Updated: 2000-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:31:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmenta/pseuds/carmenta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sack of Rome, when thousands were slaughtered within one week. The murdering, raping and pillaging seen through Santino's eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacco di Roma

It was rather interesting, Santino thought, that the longer he watched the things happening around him, the less he cared. It did not even interest him anymore what this all meant, while he had tried to discover all the details only a week ago. Such things were not important any longer. He should not have wondered about it in the first place, there was absolutely no reason for him to be interested in matters as secular as those.

From his seat on the balcony of the burnt-out house, he was observing with mild curiosity as three dishevelled, blood-covered and drunk soldiers were raping Angela Greca in the middle of the street. The famous courtesan, who counted the Archbishop of Nicosia among her lovers, was struggling desperately to get free, but of course she stood no chance against the three men. Nobody noticed her screams; the few citizens of Rome who were roaming the city at this time were hurrying along and not stopping to watch the spectacle out of fear that the soldiers might kill them.

Santino had not allowed the coven to leave the catacombs for the last four nights, ever since the pillaging had begun. It was too dangerous to have them out in the streets at this time; the soldiers killed everybody they saw, and with some bad luck a vampire could too fall victim to them. The risk was too great; Santino did not want to lose any members of his coven, not now that he had managed to weed out all rebellious souls for once. It was better to make sure that his flock was safe. Also the danger of discovery could not be ignored; if a mortal watched them disappearing through the secret entrances to the catacombs, the Roman vampire shelter could easily become a refuge of the humans.

The fledglings were already hurting with hunger, it was written plain in their hollow faces. They would need to be allowed to hunt soon, or they would just disobey Santino′s orders and feed. He could not even be angry with them if they did; starving vampires could become desperate. Besides, it could damage their minds permanently if they were not satiated for too long.

Smoke was stinging in his eyes; blinking a few times, Santino left his place on the balcony railing and made his way through the destroyed house. If there was a fire nearby, he should better leave; the buildings in this quarter were mainly made of stone, but there was always enough inflammable material around to feed the flames. Houses were burning everywhere in the city, making the night brighter than the day. The light was making Santino uncomfortable, and he tried to avoid those illuminated places as much as possible. His only consolation was that at the rate the soldiers were burning down the buildings, there would not be much left of the city to incinerate within a few nights.

Climbing across the scattered front door, Santino saw a young boy pass him by, bleeding from numerous gashes that covered the thin body. Not the son of a poor man, this one; the colourful clothes and the small golden necklace the boy wore identified him as a member of the higher classes, probably the child of an aristocrat or one of the members of the clerus. Behind him came a bunch of soldiers, shouting and whistling as they chased the terrified child. Easy to imagine what they would do to him when they had caught him. Perhaps they would have the mercy and cut his throat after it was over.

Shaking his head at this display of the grade of human civilisation, Santino was about to return to the catacombs when he spotted yet another fire. Sant′Angelo was burning, the refuge of the pope had fallen victim to the angry men. What did it matter, the palace would simply be re-erected as soon as the troops had left again. Perhaps they killed the pope; that would not change anything either. The leaders of the Catholic Church were all corrupt, loving their money, their wine and their women more than God. Santino had begun to consider himself more religious than any of the Church Fathers, a somewhat frightening thought since he was not the most faithful man either. At least he lived what he preached.

He walked quickly; ambling through the streets would only provoke attacks by the soldiers. It was not that he feared them; his vampiric strength and reflexes would keep him rather safe, after all he was not a weak fledgling. It would merely be a waste of time and energy to present himself as a target for their hatred. From what he had gathered, the men were pillaging the city because they had not received their pay; they were robbing the houses of the citizens now to get their money. But it were not only the soldiers who raped and pillaged; the inhabitants of Rome had begun to do the same once they had gotten over the initial shock of being attacked by one of their own troops.

When he passed the seemingly lifeless body of Angela Greca, he could hear her faint heartbeat. If she were reasonable, she would seek a hiding place now that her tormentors had left her lying in the street. Santino could remember seeing her in her open carriage on the way to her current lover; that had only been weeks ago. How pretty she had looked then, a beautiful lady in a wide green dress and with pearls in her delicate earlobes. Now her clothes were torn, drenched in sweat, semen and blood. And none of the people who hurried past her did as much as stop and see if she was still alive.

Reaching the Tiber, Santino wished he had taken another route back to the catacombs. Corpses were floating in the water, cast into the river by careless gravediggers. Sure, the bodies could not be allowed to rot in the streets of the city, that would only bring cholera and the plague. But throwing the cadavers into the river poisoned the water; only miles downstream the Tiber was the only source of water. The sight of the corpses, some of which were new while others had been dead for days, brought back many bad memories. Santino clearly remembered that the plague had come from the water in his hometown, resulting finally in the death of nearly all the inhabitants. If only they had known that the river was dangerous, they would not have drunk it. Perhaps his life would have taken another course then.

A scream made him turn around, a woman′s high-pitched wailing. Those noises were normal in Rome these nights, and Santino sometimes wondered if there were any women who had not been raped yet. It made his stomach twist to think about the cruelties that were being committed. Usually the vampires did not care at all about what was going on in the mortal world around them, but Santino had found that this time closing his eyes did not work. Not during the first nights, when the horrors of the pillaging soldiers had been too new.

The first night the coven had been out to feed as usual, and Santino had nearly disgorged the blood he had just taken when right next to him a young girl was slit open from her navel to her throat. Back in the hiding place, the others of the group had reported similar things, many also speaking of fires. Enough reasons to forbid the coven to leave the catacombs; there had not been any resistance anyway, the others had all been shocked by what they had seen, and the vampires hardly cared about corpses and wounds. The current situation was too much.

Perhaps the mortal world no longer had a place for vampires. They did not need the Children of Darkness any longer as the plague that reminded them of God and Satan. Men had assumed that role themselves; they were doing the work that was the purpose of the covens, killing indiscriminately.


End file.
